IT WAS November 1999. My then 72 year old father suffered from what he thought was heatstroke after a long day in the sun with friends at a picnic. He collapsed for a short while and complained that he couldn’t see, but after a short rest he felt well enough to drive home. Upon arrival, he told my mother he wasn’t feeling well and wanted to lie down. My mother took one look at him and told him he had to go to the doctor and called my sister over. My mother and sister saved his life with their actions.

…and Don Miguel Ruiz. I’ve now been living my life for many years by following Ruiz’s Four Agreements. First published in 1997, this book helped me to reinforce the logic and way of thinking I’d been developing through my own maturity and put it into four simple concepts that I could follow for life.

Agreement 1Be impeccable with your word – Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

Agreement 2Don’t take anything personally – Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.

Agreement 3Don’t make assumptions – Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

Agreement 4Always do your best - Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.

And another person who appears to live his life according to the same or similar philosophy is Tim Minchin. Today I discovered his newly animated beat-poem called Storm. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Every so often an invention comes along that is a game changer. Most of the really good ones like the Wheel, Electricity, Light Bulb and Plumbing pre-date me, but I am fortunate to live in a time where the rate of progress now is such that I can witness many of the newest breakthroughs first-hand. Arguably, the Apple iPad is one of these breakthroughs.

Today I received a personal invitation from Aim for Awesome to share my thoughts on “The Point of Life”. Vern said it could be “two sentences, or two pages – up to you”. Anybody who could so profoudly sum up the answer to this question in two sentences is a better person than me. To me, it’s a question that demands respectful consideration.

PHISHING is a worldwide problem. Unscrupulous cyber-criminals, unsuspecting Internet users and apathetic web-service providers: It’s a volatile mix that will always benefit the crook. Hell, if the user is stupid enough to click on a link in an email message and gladly provide their user account details, they deserve what they get!

SEPTEMBER 23, 2009: The Australian Outback visits Sydney – the nation’s largest city. It was Nature reminding Man that it cannot be taken for granted and will not be ignored.

Photo by NSW Maritime

Man often thinks he can do anything. Clearing jungles, re-routing rivers, building cities. But it’s nothing to crow about as we are cautioned that with just a shudder, Mother Earth is always in control.

Imagine the power. With merely a breath, the planet can pick up five million tonnes of dust and dirt whip it into a front 800 kilometres long and drive it more than 1,100 kilometres from Central Australia to the east coast and out to the Pacific Ocean – all in less than a day. Coating anything and everything in its way, the dust storm caused havoc, stopping industry and transport and costing millions in lost productivity.

This planetary nudge was a reminder that from Dust we came and to Dust we will return. Man’s miniscule reign is just an itch in Earth’s four-billion year grandeur. All we are is Dust in the Wind.

Today I “attended” an educational technologies conference. Well sort of. I wasn’t there, but then again, I was. IWBnet’s “Leading a Digital School” conference was on at the Gold Coast in sunny Queensland and while I was unable to be a delegate at the venue, I had the next best thing. Many of the delegates who were there, were happy to instantly share their experience with the rest of the world via Twitter.

October 20, 2007 – Australian Opposition Leader, Kevin Rudd is on the election campaign trail making a promise that made state governments, educational authorities and teachers shudder in their boots. While holding up a laptop which he referred to as “the toolbox of the 21st Century“, he promised to provide a computer to every high school student from grades 9 through 12. Then he became Prime Minister and the pressure was really on, because while he would provide the funding, the Federal Government does not control school education and would not be responsible for implementation – the individuals states would.

Late last year I attended my son’s high school graduation where speech after speech espoused the knowledge and skills that the Class of 2008 have gained over their thirteen years of schooling. As the students prepared for the next phase of their lives, it was heartening to hear that they all had been instilled with the fundamentals of lifelong learning. I wish.

I’m not sure I quite remember when and how it started. He was just another boy in my class. But it seemed that everything he did just grated on me. No, I don’t want to listen to your music. Hell, that’s a stupid haircut. Put your hand down and shutup for god’s sake. I’m gonna say something to him.

I had a little nap after work, and when I awoke, I found myself covered in rashers. On the news they showed up the phone number for the Swine Flu information line, so I rang them up to get some advice. Problem was I couldn’t make out a word they were saying. All I heard was crackling.

NOT LONG after Kevin Rudd’s Labor Party was whisked into power in Australia after 12 years of conservative government, there were immediate and obvious differences that appeared. Rudd took no traditional “honeymoon” period, instead preferring to get straight to work on delivering his pre-election promises. One of these being the $1.2 billion “Digital Education Revolution“.

Humans compute very differently to computers. Knowledge, Intelligence and Wisdom are not terms often attributed to computers. The closest descriptors in the computer world are Data, Processors and Recursion. They’re just not the same.

In the article “Why Teachers and Schools Should be Blogging“, I discussed the reasons and benefits of blogging in the classroom, but for the blogging-novice, there are student privacy, security and policy concerns that must be considered. Assuming you took notice of the content of that first article, this one will take you through the first steps of creating a class blog and is part of a series that will clarify and develop this process for teachers and schools starting out.